{"id":375906,"date":"2026-08-25T08:52:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T15:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/?p=375906"},"modified":"2026-08-25T08:52:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T15:52:11","slug":"netflix-adds-3-true-crime-docs-on-romance-scams-stream-them-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/netflix-adds-3-true-crime-docs-on-romance-scams-stream-them-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Netflix adds 3 true-crime docs on romance scams: stream them now"},"content":{"rendered":"

Netflix<\/a> now has three true-crime documentaries<\/a> about romance fraud in the mix: The Tinder Swindler, The Puppet Master: Hunting the Ultimate Conman, and Bad Vegan.<\/p>\n

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If you’re on dating apps, watch them. Americans lost $1.16 billion<\/strong> to romance scams in the first nine months of 2025, with a median loss of $2,218. In 2024, the FBI logged $1.3 billion in romance and confidence-fraud losses. That’s probably still low, because plenty of cases never get reported.<\/p>\n\n

Each documentary shows a different flavor of the same scam. In The Tinder Swindler, Simon Leviev, born Shimon Hayut, used Tinder and a carefully staged luxury persona in a case tied to about $10 million. In The Puppet Master: Hunting the Ultimate Conman, Robert Hendy-Freegard posed as MI5<\/strong> and manipulated seven women and one man out of nearly \u00a31 million. In Bad Vegan, Anthony Strangis met Sarma Melngailis online and persuaded her to divert nearly $2 million with increasingly bizarre promises, including that he could make her dog immortal.<\/p>\n\n

And the warning signs are the same ones experts keep naming, the ones people still miss: polished profiles, requests to move the chat to WhatsApp<\/a> or Telegram<\/a>, and stories about travel, security issues, bank problems, or emergencies that you can’t verify. The apps are trying to catch up. Tinder now requires Face Check<\/strong> for U.S. users. Bumble says its Deception Detector blocked 95% of scam or spam accounts in testing. Still, nearly 60% of 2025 losses started on social media, helped along by synthetic photos, cloned voices, and fake video calls. All three documentaries are streaming on Netflix now.<\/p>\n

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Netflix now has three true-crime documentaries about romance fraud in the mix: The Tinder Swindler, The Puppet Master: Hunting the Ultimate Conman, and Bad Vegan. If you’re on dating apps, watch them. Americans lost $1.16 billion to romance scams in the first nine months of 2025, with a median loss of $2,218. In 2024, the … Continue reading “Netflix adds 3 true-crime docs on romance scams: stream them now”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9226,"featured_media":375905,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[1015],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-375906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9226"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375906"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":375907,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375906\/revisions\/375907"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375906"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=375906"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=375906"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=375906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}